What lovers do

“White Lace” – Jeremy Mann, oil on panel

I have been lending a new girlfriend here in Croatia the collection of books about love, famous lovers, courtesans, geisha, and, of course, seducers I brought here as reference materials for my second book. She is engaged to marry a lovely Dalmatian man in his mid-fifties. Evidently the content, shared, is producing some much appreciated surprises, (for both of them), in the bedroom; exchanged words have always been powerful aphrodisiacs. I hope all my writing efforts have the same net effect on all its future readers.

I don’t think romance is necessarily about seduction, I believe romance is about bringing ourselves and our partner delight; a heightened state of anticipation of mutual pleasure.  Small things not grand expressions – just as it is the small things that build up unchecked will also destroy love. When? why? did we stop being ‘romantic’?

“It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”                                                        ― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

I recently discovered Billet Doux because of Musetouch on Facebook and I do not mean the French lingerie company nor from the “1670s, “love letter,” French, literally “sweet note,” from billet “document, note” (14c., diminutive of bille; see bill (n.1)) + doux “sweet,”. Rather the small exquisite masterpieces of handwork used to transport the letters which lovers used to write to one another. I am charmed. At some point, the right man, will understand that his words tucked into one of these would make me swoon more effectively than any diamond worth a hundred times what the average price of these archaic treasures sell for.  Let us consider, for a moment, the circumstance of receiving such in an age before telephone, television, the Internet and all of the immediacy offered to lovers today… the anticipation of waiting for words, the promise of reuniting or escape to be carried by a courier (a stage coach or private hired rider) or, even left at a point of rendezvous frequented by lovers and unknown to others. A touch point of words, scrawled upon a small piece of paper with a fountain pen – or quill, perhaps scented, sanded, sealed and rolled into the carrying tube represented by the billet doux – private words, words that excite. Franz Liszt (1811-1886) sent Europe ablaze with his love letters – to a great many women – but, for example, I think none finer of precise use of language (as well as his music) to create longing and desire, to mark his lovers’ heart as his own (for however long or short).

Thursday morning 1834

My heart overflows with emotion and joy! I do not know what heavenly languor, what infinite pleasure permeates it and burns me up. It is as if I had never loved!!! Tell me whence these uncanny disturbances spring, these inexpressible foretastes  of delight, these divine, tremors of love. […]

This is to be — to be!

Marie! Marie!

Oh let me repeat that name a hundred times, a thousand times over; for three days now it has lived within me, oppressed me, set me afire. I am not writing to you, no, I am close beside you. I see you, I hear you. Eternity in your arms… Heaven, Hell, everything, all is within you, redoubled… Oh! Leave me free to rave in my delirium. Drab, tame, constricting reality is no longer enough for me. We must live our lives to the full, loving and suffering to extremes!…

Franz

One does not ‘need’ a billet doux to make your lovers’ heart race – one needs to actively contemplate the path to ‘un-doing’. None of us could actually use language like this today and be taken seriously. But the intent, the intent is something anyone can put into action.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

The shifting trajectory of kisses

“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.”
— Louise Erdrich

For the first time since 2005 I am dating again. No, I wasn’t in a long term relationship. No, I didn’t have a traumatic (or tragic) experience. And no, I don’t hate men. I have been on OKCupid for a bit shy of two years now. But in the last two weeks, finally being in Croatia after a year of deliberation, I have migrated from online and video Skype conversations to actually sitting with a man face-to-face over hot chocolate, over dinner, and going for walks.  I have kissed all four of these men. Nine years is an awfully long time to have not done so, some I wanted much more with, with some, perhaps the kisses were actually too much to have shared.

This morning the (very loving) husband of a dear girlfriend, in the most subtle way imaginable, expressed his energetic protection for me. In my new life’s chapter, taking place far from practical intervention and rescue should such be necessary, David’s love is not the kind of love I am unaccustomed to having in my life; at first I was puzzled by why he would choose to Tweet the content and Cc me on such.  This dating thing is fraught with perils that every woman experiences, even when you are in a committed relationship rape happens. David’s genuine concern expressed for both myself and my best friend (as we were both mentioned in the Tweet and are both now actively dating again for the first time in many years) is soft focused and filled with light in a world with harsh realities. So David, I am sending you a huge hug, and a slightly insufficient thank you – message received.

Back to the dating thing.

In the last year a very wise man, and an equally wise woman, have both expressed the same thought about applying caution to sharing our physical space, and (any kind of) our energy with others. Every encounter with another (physically and energetically) leaves residue on the participants and in the domain of space inhabited, as such it’s incredibly important to understand this before sharing either with another. I suppose, if I am truly honest, protecting myself from giving too much of myself away, harming another against their future or having the negative energies of others zap me has kept me from dating, and eventually becoming intimate, for so long. Because I noticed, boy-oh-boy have I noticed, how I have felt after each encounter with these four very different Croatian men. Not that it is all important but it is of merit to note that each of these men is at least 14 years younger than I am.

With the first man it was like ‘coming home’. Safe, protected, a sense of continuity that felt ancient, comfortable in both silence and in conversation, with him (and this is hard to explain) I felt an extension of my greatest self, perhaps, because in many regards we are both rather unconventional. And when it came to expressions of passion, the kiss I will remember and draw energy from for the rest of my life seemed ripped from a romance novel. The second man to win my kisses had, by his own admission over the Thanksgiving dinner table, not kissed (or done anything else with) a woman in six years. There was considerable alcohol involved and some energetic ‘egging on’ because another man nearby was being dismissive of the former man’s rationale and (what I sensed) deep pain and his own admitted fear on behalf of his son. And so, initially I shared three, not passionate, kisses with him to remind him of the pleasure that can be had from such. He seem both confused, delighted and ‘warmed’ by this – eventually taking the initiative and seemed to enjoy himself to the point that he asked to have me spend the night with him. (um, no.) Man number three, one of my two dates yesterday, is exactly half my age – still a man in chronological years, and sufficiently so to have actively pursued a date with me. We had fun. Enjoyed amazing hot chocolate together on the Riva in Grad Trogir. He (easily) agreed to my request to rescue the remaining pomegranates on the tree in front of the abandoned house in Trogir in which I have fallen in love.  I now have a lovely bag full of these jewels which otherwise would have found themselves rotting on the ground as a result of yesterday’s Bura and todays’ rain storm.  He is very sweet, and earnest, but in many ways he really is too young in terms of life experience for this to be ‘anything’.  My second date yesterday is 18 years my junior, but sufficient experience to not feel any lacking. His candor and overt sexual interest in me was palpable from moment one.  He kissed me within 15 minutes of our meeting (and he was really very good at it). The best kiss of the evening took place against a 400 year old stone wall in a narrow alley of Seget Donji – his hands both cupping my face and then in my hair (where, as a great many terrific lovers know the nerve endings in our scalp make us particularly sensitive to erotic stimulation). His sexual energy is very much like that of Mickey Rourke in this scene from 9 1/2 weeks too dangerous to maintain one’s sanity and certainly not sustainable.

One thing is for certain, I need to recalibrate as I can tell that my trajectory has been influenced by the sharing of this tender intimacy in ways that are very uncomfortable to who I am. Like a hangover for my energy I have allowed myself to get swept up ‘in the moments’. Making up for lost time? Squandered resources? No, not either. I feel very much like the meme above about kisses being like drinking salt water. I can’t undo this, and some I most certainly would not change because in these experiences have offered me a greater cognition, and with such I come closer to completion. Still, a little discernment going forward would be a very good idea and a practical consideration worth embracing.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Love, as a journey – guest blog for Last Minute Travel Club

Co-published, as guest blog for Last Minute Travel’s Blog.

I recently received an email from my friend Ken at Last Minute Travel and LMT Club – “Would you like to be our #TravelTweetChat guest for this week, the topic is travel and romance…” to which I replied, “Yes, I’d love to!”

11 months of meeting (all kinds of) men through OKCupid, years of thinking (and writing) about ‘happy endings’ as well as the promise of new beginnings, passion, intimacy, tenderness, romance, words to convey longing, reuniting, and love, exploring the world (largely alone) – maybe he wasn’t so far off with his subsequent words of “We need an expert on love and travel, that’s you!”

So to help you plan your Valentine’s Day travels, it’s time to roll up my sleeves!

Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu, made in France, c.1475. This is an example of a cordiform (heart-shaped) manuscript. It contains 44 love songs by composers such as Dufay, Ockeghem, Binchois, and Busnois.

The romantic love (rather than relationships for political expedience or strategic alliance) as most of Western society understands it can be directly traced to the courtly love of 12th century France. The troubadours and their lyrical love poetry sung to the accompaniment of a lyre or lute, in nearly every instance this courtly love was directed toward a presumed married, virtuous and unattainable woman (an aristocrat surely and written of as a goddess on earth). The words were always of her being pined for by a younger man.  If he was sufficiently eloquent (and physically compelling) she might deign to take him as her lover – a grand passion, erotic love, in French called fin’amour (discreetly conducted even if everyone knew) and, you should know, it was always HER CHOICE to call him to court or to her bedroom. 

So let our journey of love begin in France – but fast forward to Paris in the 20th Century and the scandalous affair that would be publicly condemned by the Vatican, result in two marriages but also two divorces of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

I have loved every experience I have have ever had in Paris – every single drop of the joie de vivre, the taste of Bellini’s and (multiple bottles of) Veuve Clicquot in Harry’s (American) Bar as well as the the Bar at the Hôtel Lancaster, where Liz and Dick would take over two of the eight floors of the hotel when they were in town, the exquisitely appreciative men whose words tried to seduce me into their arms whilst I simply climbed the stairs of Sacré-Cœur, the forgiving effect which my décolletage ensconced in a black lace bra made by Lise-Charmel peeking out from a Chanel jacket had while breathlessly repeating “Je me regrette, Je M’excuse, Je vous prie de bien vouloir m’excuser” in arriving to Palais Garnier et de l’Opéra bastille , alors!, late.  I have never stayed at the exquisite Shangri-La Paris  mais oui, j’ai eu le coup a foudre!

The journey of love doesn’t require grandiosity – I know, I know, it’s lovely but romance can mean just as much when traveling in a late model van.  Skating on the Fond Pond in Boston Common? Followed by a dinner of lobster fra diavolo at The Daily Catch in the North End and cannoli at Caffe Paradiso is perfect in a settled-into-our-relationship-let’s-just-be-kind-of-way. And if you aren’t “in love” or not in a romantic relationship is there a better city in America for sharing with a best friend of either sex? I  think not! I mean, Ray Kinsella and Terence Mann sitting in Fenway Park? Are you really going to tell me that their ‘bro-mance’ didn’t make you want to plan your own road trip to Kenmore Square to find your own Field of Dreams?

The Blue Cave (Modra špilja) is located at the Balun Cove on the eastern side of the island Biševo

I am falling utterly, ridiculously, in love with the people and country of Croatia. Like two of the other countries of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire I have visited (Austria and Hungary) this horseshoe shaped country is a compelling mix of people who truly appreciate living, who are, as the French would say, bien dans sa peau (comfortable in one’s own skin), an epicurean and oenophile dreamscape made real – found in Istria (adjoins Italy’s Province of Trieste) where Roman emperors regarded the wines amongst the best their empire had to offer, running south and east along the clear beautiful waters of the Adriatic with its 1000 plus islands of the Dalmatian Coast and onto the music festivals and lifestyles of the rich and famous of Dubrovnik in high season and back to Zagreb – the land and the descendants of Bronze Age inhabitants are proving worthy of my heart.  If you can handle the F-bombs of Anthony Bourdain, see his reaction to the food, the wine and his experience from a year ago which aired in March 2013 and I hope you will take up my challenge to see world class musicians Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser as 2Cellos (oh gawd, you have to hear them play!) – just a sampling, to whet your wanderlust.

Helene Berman straw hat

There is, of course, a short, definitive list of romantic things that should accompany you as journey toward love (even if you decide to stay-cation)  – Neuhaus chocolates, J & E Atkinson I Coloniali hand cream, (as previously mentioned) Veuve Clicquot, a gorgeous straw hat (protection from peering eyes and the sun, a little mysterious and a bit of serious attitude to carry off), a white dress – not a wedding gown – that manages to convey ‘woman’ at the same time it is visually soft, massages, manicures and pedicures for two to make hand holding, kissing, spooning and love-making more tactically voluptuous (and yes, guys you can do this without getting all metro-sexual), a bouquet of unusual flowers (oh, plueze not roses) such as mixed bunch featuring white peonies and stock; if you are reading this in NYC try my girlfriend Hannah Ling’s Gardenia Organic  or if in Stockholm try Jemima Nylund’s Norr Mälarstrand Blommor  (order REALLY early).

In closing, whether your version of love is Muse or Il Divo, Ni vous sans moi, ni moi sans vous, (Neither you without me, neither I without you) – Happy Valentine’s Day wishes no matter where you travel with your sweetheart!

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Seeking, and finding, the elusive soulmate

The Red Balloon, 1956 Oscar winning film by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse, found its soul mate! Click image to watch.

Our condition as living beings demands connection, and to some degree or another we are all seeking the elusive resonance with another person that is generally referred to as finding our soulmate. Some, I am not one of them, can ‘settle’ just to be able to feel, to have a partner in life’s activities, to have a bedmate for sex, or someone to bitch at – how can this be ‘enough’?

An acquaintance made through OKCupid has written two drafts of a paper for publication that he enthusiastically has shared with me – I am very flattered – for myself there is a single sentence that stands out from amongst the current 3,000+ words:

A soul mate is not an object, it is a state of being.

~ R.S.

This, I love. A soul mate is a state of being.

This isn’t “The Secret” but, THE SECRET!  The fullness of being necessary for ourselves and without which we cannot be in a state of preparedness of our being to resonate or recognise its ‘other’ (or as RS points out the potential of many others over the course of our lifetimes).

Love is the only just and holy war. Two friends pledge loyal opposition to one another. I vow I will defend the integrity of my separate being and respect the integrity of your being. We will meet only as equals; I will present myself in fullness of being and will expect the same of you. I will not cower, apologize or condescend. Our covenant will be to love one another justly and powerfully; to establish inviolable boundaries; to respect our separate sanctuaries. We will remain joined in the sweet agony of dialogue, the contest of conversation, the dialectic of love until we arrive at synthesis.

—Fire in the Belly: On Being A Man^© Sam Keen, 1992

There are few and rare people who find in one another (despite distractions) the perfection of their being and love with their partner.  I am just finishing reading Marilyn Yalom’s fantastic How the French Invented Love, Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance which has lead me to further explore the 50 year relationship of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.  But first, as Ms. Yalom quotes at the beginning of chapter fourteen:

My love, you and I are one, and I feel that I am you as much as you are me.

~ Simone de Beauvoir to Jean-Paul Sartre, October 8, 1939

 Never have I felt so forcefully that our lives have no meaning outside of our love.

Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir, November 15, 1939

They were far from perfect, after a decade it seems that their intense sexual energy for each other abated, they each took lovers, transparently shared every detail with the other, there was (as the expression goes) “collateral damage” from their threesomes, and pain for Simone especially when Jean-Paul ‘got too close’ in prolonged affairs that encroached on what was theirs, yet, as Colette Audry, a teaching colleague of Beauvoir’s in the 1930s, wrote of them: “Theirs was a new kind of relationship, and I had never seen anything like it. I cannot describe what it was like to be present when those two were together. It was so intense that sometimes it made others who saw it sad not to have it.” They were committed without the formal legal framework of marriage for fifty years and yet wound up sharing a single grave in Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

For a tiny bit more on Sartre and de Beauvoir I suggest you start here and then if interested you can expand your reading and also watch this documentary.

My point is that sometimes ‘it just happens’ as it did to Sartre and de Beauvoir when they were 21 and 23, it, as the French express – coup de foudre, happens when someone ‘sees’ you for who you really are.   I don’t think this can happen until you are really ready to be seen and doesn’t (necessarily) require a physical connection to express the truest intimacy that you can imagine existing.  Our transparency isn’t verbal or emotional, it is energetic – the tuning fork which finds us inexplicably drawn to other people that make us more as a result of being ‘with’ them.

Aristotle wrote:

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Then what makes us stay up at night, or rise early, to simply witness a lover sleep, denying sleep and work, commitments, and other friends to spend ten more minutes (or ten more hours) talking to them because the cup truly runneth over in the place that is uniquely ‘yours’ and to cease the sharing of thoughts, music, books and life means to stop living altogether (or so it seems) is all part of the equation.  

Over and over during the course of the last 10 months I have woken in the middle of the night, and it has always been because a man in a different time zone on the other side of the planet has just sent some kind of digital message to me. I am not responding to the input of their message but the energy of their thoughts toward me that prompted them to reach out to me in the first place.  I respond because the connection between us has become hardwired on my circuitry – the intensity of these ‘awakenings’ seem to be happening ever more frequently so I have to believe I am ‘getting closer’ to the convergence of metaphysical and physical.  I hope you are also so blessed.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my print or ebook from Amazon, please click on the cover art of my book, ebook also available through Barnes & Noble and Lulu, thank you! 

When words fail us

Earlier this week my dear girlfriend Jennifer posted this (at right)  from Word Porn on her Facebook wall and I responded with “Thus my use of tears.” There was a lot of intellectual prowess offered in subsequent comments and a couple from strategic consultant and author Eric Best, who wrote:

“The inability to express a feeling should not be confused with what might be the inability to have the feeling. […]  Yes, and too much speech can leave us emotionless.”

It’s pouring out right now, those heavy drops of rain that give rise to unspoken meaning – something we feel rather than what we can adequately express.  And as my brain fires into seemingly disconnected segues on a regular basis, those raindrops made me think of a couple of other conversations I have had this week – language is a funny thing.

As many of you reading my blog have come to know I am a marketing communications professional and an author, parlaying my love of words into chronicling the next incarnation of myself and in finding a deeply romantic and spiritually aligned love through OKCupid.  Three days ago I was having simultaneous conversations (sadly in English as I do not have command of each of their native tongues) with five men – one each in Northern Ireland, Croatia, Sweden, Italy and a Frenchman presumed in Barcelona but in fact in Biarritz named Michel.

Michel wrote:

“I would have certainly many things to talk about with you, and most probably we would not fight. BUT there is a very important restriction, and you shall never forget it: we speak in your language, which you play perfectly well, and on my side, i am a clumsy and basic user. This may potentially give birth to many deep misunderstandings. So please, keep prudent and lower your impetuous fire. ;-)” […]  It is not concerned by the words themselves, but by the unconscious meaning we give them when we are emotional. I want to say something, but you hear another thing. Of course this is not for such sentences as “your eggs are boiled”, but when emotions are overwhelming.”

To which point, I responded with the fact that I was embracing a refresher course in French and my goal was to be able to think and dream as a French woman, and, for the second time in a week:

“I did understand your point about the nuances of lingua franca, colloquial meaning, thinking in a language is quite different than speaking or writing it. When emotions are overwhelming tears always work for me!”

Which brings me to Marijan, living on an island within a breathtaking archipelago off the Dalmatian coast in the Adriatic, who only wishes to speak in “the language of love.” We all know that love has a variety manifestations, I will confine this post to just two meanings – the first sweeping, swooning and romantic in nature and the second being Divine, spiritual, compassionate, holistic and enlightened (as previously stated I am seeking to merge these into one lover).  Marijan refers to the second in the context of ‘dealing with me’ and the rest of humanity but in sharing our connectedness in context of the latter, in exposing me to the culture of his country in video music hyperlinks, a stronger woman would have difficulty not to mix the two types of love and their meanings (I am not strong and sometimes, unintentionally, he makes me swoon). My initial impressions of Marijan is that he is a combination of Croatian Yoda, Jean-Louis “Jack” Kérouac and the Dalai Lama but he reminds me of Louis de Bernières’ Corelli’s Mandolin and Nicholas Cage’s character in the 2001 film of the same title. It is the scope of Marijan’s love of life and living, the energy he gives away, that he feels and responds to, the depth of his thoughts as he expresses them that cause your breath to catch and your heart to resonant with white light energy, in other words Divine love.

This is precisely what my dear girlfriend Hilal and I were just bantering about over some of my recent posts when she emailed me from her home in Istanbul:

“Reading this post and the one before, I had a feeling that you have great love of the One and for the One say it Almighty, say it Benevolent, God or Allah. This is great but you are mistaken this love with the type of love of and love for a human/a lover. Love of the One is unlimited and unconditional whereas the love of a lover is limited and sooner or later conditional.”

And my response:

“In this my dearest we can disagree – all love, regardless of its manifestation in our lives, originates from Divine love.  Sometimes that love is transient (only to teach us a lesson that the Divine wishes us to understand) but it is all from Divine (in my humble opinion).”

And then her reply:

“You put it nicely what I was trying to say: “all love, regardless of its manifestation in our lives, originates from Divine love.” No doubt about this and I think we agree on this. What, I don’t agree with you is the topic of manifestation of Divine love in our lives bit: You were writing about manifestation of Divine love with humans- friends, husband or lover-s etc. Whereas, what I think, for divine love to manifest, we don’t need husband or lovers because we emanate this pure love wherever we go or with whomever we are. So, I feel that manifestation of the Divine love to one individual in a relationship because of my choice (i.e. falling in love w/someone, or getting married) is limiting the unlimited Divine love. I don’t need to get married, have kids, lover etc to be able to manifest the Divine love. OK, getting married does not mean that I am limiting the manifestation of Divine love, either but how can I say, I feel that it is our ego- to have the ownership of loved ones, my husband, my kids etc.  I think now I am confusing myself as I cannot write clearly. We need to Skype so you can interrupt and ask clarifications. My point comes from an assumption that manifestation of this UNLIMITED and UNCONDITIONAL love, the Divine love in a relationship, meaning on human beings, who are limited and conditional doesn’t match together. It is like disrespecting the Divine love and mistaken its manifestation with the love I feel for a person.” 

It isn’t for lack of tools online to translate words from language to language, but the colloquial understanding, the harmonic resonance of our souls, the interpretation of words and emotions based upon our unique perspectives that is both inherent nature and circumstantial nurture that is something else, more elevated and nuanced.  I believe that active listening, which doesn’t limit us to hearing but includes the use of our heart, can finish sentences when words fail us.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency through PayPal via livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Available through Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble!

The Hand-kiss a courtly, tender, respectful gesture we need more of!

Jacques Chirac kisses Angela Merkel’s hand

Last evening, for the first time in so many years I can’t recall exactly who, or when or what the circumstances of the last time it happened were (though am pleased that I should have known such a chivalric gesture previously) a very genteel man kissed my hand.

It could be his octogenarian age which made this such a natural thing to do – though the last man was certainly not his age peer and I believe was a member of a German fraternity half of my then age of 39. It might be that he is English, a world traveler, a global thought leader and a networks influencer (long before social media made such ‘easy’) as such refined behaviour is somehow natural to men in these spheres of influence. I understand from my girlfriend that in all the years she has known him he has never kissed her hand.

It is gallant in the extreme, and evidently (most) American men often think it is silly or feel stupid attempting it, but this nearly archaic sign of regard for a woman Il est incroyable! A man gently taking her hand in his, kisses the air just above her skin and, sometimes the skin itself (as Jacques Chirac, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Nicholas Sarkozy have so exquisitely executed on the back of all kinds of ladies hands – my favorite is the particular hand-kiss Keith Urban gave to his wife Nicole Kidman on the Red Carpet – it captures the fullest extent of his love and respect for her, intimate in the extreme, tender and effortless even with several billion people bearing witness).

For those of you who have never bestowed such, nor received, allow me to explain why this is such a high form of regard. A man doesn’t offer a hand-kiss lightly or randomly, only to particular lady to whom he feels a special level of homage is due. It is an unusually formal gesture.  When a man kisses a woman’s hand it implies that he thinks her noble and that he respects her (pay attention, there is a lovely version of this in the @2CELLOS & @ZuccheroSugar video) as a remnant of the feudal ceremony of vassalage in which a knight swore fealty to his King or Queen it also means that he is putting himself at her service. Of course there can be romantic connotations as we witness in period dramas and in romance novels but I think it’s important to understand the origins of the hand-kiss are based in respect, not seduction.

There are rules of engagement – of course, thank you Raven Emrys for the following three points:

First of all, one kisses a lady’s hand in only three social situations:

1.) You already know the lady, and she offers her hand,

2.) You are being introduced to her, and she offers her hand, or

3.) You know the woman intimately and you offer your open hand to her and she accepts it (as we see in the picture of the elderly couple)

What made my experience last night so extraordinary was there was no intention to receive such  – blithely unaware (some of my friends my say, “as usual”) I extended my hand to the gentleman as he was departing our company, taking leave from the back seat of my girlfriends’ car.  I gently clasp his hand while I verbally expressed my delight in finally having the occasion to meet him and how much I had enjoyed our conversation.  On his part it was completely without artifice – he simply took my outstretched hand, gently cupping my fingers in his palm, lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed the spot just behind the knuckles of my two middle fingers. The effect on my being was one of humbled breathlessness – mind you, not a swoon – but surprise that I should be so regarded by someone so accomplished.

My friends seem to regard my life as being somewhat extraordinary – perhaps so.  Perhaps it is extraordinary because I view the exquisiteness of life in measurable beauty such as an unexpected hand-kiss, these things happen to me because I am receptive to them, charmed by the possibilities and humbled by being present to them, grateful for a sweeping vista as well as the tilt of a man’s head over my hand as he calls upon the courtly manners so lacking in our world today.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

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Cringe-worthy

In any relationship, but I think it is somehow more potent and damaging in romantic ones where so much of our self is tied to the approval of the other, the least welcome expressed words are some variation on “it’s so expensive” or “but I bought you everything you ever wanted!” or “what about the cost of the plane tickets?”.  Let’s understand something straight up front what finances are expended in the name of pleasing another (which is essentially about doing something that pleases you) should NEVER subsequently be mentioned as a means of control, extorting emotions or invoking some kind of guilt on the part of the recipient.  My next point to this post is I HATE EXCEL SPREADSHEETS!

I am not a rich woman, in fact there are times when I am so underwater that were I not a very good swimmer I would surely drown. I have been told that my generosity goes so far as to give someone the shirt (sometimes quite literally) off my back.  I do these things because I WANT TO not because of a perceived indebtedness to the person to whom I am giving or any expectations of reciprocity. If there is any ugly truth attached to my giving is the still prickling subconscious ethos of my father of ‘being one up’ and never owing anyone anything.  Unfortunately it has been my experience to be subjected, or witness, to the human foible of equating expenditures with buying love or such gross cheapness that a husband spending $16 (instead of the $8 the wife demanded) on Godiva chocolates for a hostess gift being attended by four people created such an embarrassingly ugly scene as to still be vivid in my mind more than 3 years hence.

Here’s the truth – hard as it might be to embrace – generosity should never be conditional. If the cost of something is beyond your means, do not spend it to please another only to later negate it in drawing from that “filing cabinet” of wrongs which human beings keep and use when some behaviour of a friend or lover does displeases us. And by cost I don’t simply mean monetary expenditures – there is a cost to everything, if you have to evaluate the action against value then you are ‘doing’ for the wrong reason. If you have an opinion that something is expensive – keep it to yourself. The person on the other side of this conversation has just taken your words to mean they are ‘not worth it’ because your sliding scale of value deems something to have a cost too high to justify in relation to them.  Only rarely the recipient is suggesting that they desire that you purchase a strand of (or even a single) rare, natural, perfect, Tahitian pearls which have been collected by diving without apparatus by a native and then hand-knotted with silk and embellished with a diamond and high carat weight clasp or ‘a season’ long rental of a private villa on Lake Como (and how many of us would even ask for such things?).  If you have to keep a spreadsheet of your expenditures against any relationship (other than profit and loss statements for your business) you have larger issues than being in that relationship. A man I was once acquainted with said (something to the effect of) “with enough money any guy can have any girl” – what does this say about the morality of participants at the intersection of their (ahem) transaction?

The fullness of your being isn’t tied to the monetary value of your gift-giving; rather it is tied to the purity of intention and the tenderness of your actions, the surprise and delight factor that expressly conveys “I thought of you today” and wanted to bring you joy.  There are a million tiny expressions which cost next to nothing to tell someone, without words, how highly you regard them and their presence in your life; your relationships and who you are should only truly be defined by such.  While both are appropriate, there are times when bestowing a handful of daisies gathered in a meadow will have more resonance than a florist perfect arrangement of exquisiteness with a gilt embossed card.  Presenting ourselves and our relationships with value has very little to do with monies expended and everything to do with innate generosity of spirit.

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”

― John Steinbeck

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The lexicon of tears

Without apology, I have as rich a lexicon for tears as the Inuit have for snow.

I mention this for three reasons – first, a man I am acquainted with posted this on one of his Facebook pages over the weekend. Secondly, my neighbor Kanika passed her road test yesterday and now has her drivers’ license for the first time (she is in her early 30s) – I was so proud of her (especially because she overcame a sleepless night of nerves, and has only been driving just over 2 weeks) that I welled up with tears over her success. With the knowledge that she leaves tomorrow to return to India for a visit of 4 months, and afterward (the plan is) for her to join her husband in California and their new life, her gift of a last session of Reiki to me brought a flood of tears at its conclusion. Impermanence is omnipotent and we rarely (humankind) truly honor and cherish what is good for as long as it graces our lives.  

Finally, a man I am growing to know made me cry tears based in an entirely new (or perhaps long forgotten) realm for me – being emotionally swamped by his transparency, beautiful intention and tenderness, and expressed desire to be present to wipe them away.  24 hours later I am still reeling and trying to process the scope of his words but, for now, I think I will focus on tears in general.

For tears, in all their many forms, have physiological benefit for our bodies, lubricating our eyes and provide psychological release from life’s uncertainty and suffering by ridding us of accumulated toxins in our bodies, drawing a loved one closer for comfort.

It would be a perfectly lovely, and loving, world if the types of tears which come as a result of stress, anger, sorrow, frustration, disappointment, betrayal, loss and grief, physical pain, anguish, and ridicule did not exist.  Until such a day, we can only do what we can to mitigate and expunge their causes in the micro of our lives and for those around us so that in the macro of our world comes closer to realizing the promise of Nirvana.

At the other end of the spectrum are tears acknowledging a blessing of some kind – an epiphany, knowledge, reverence, awe, a connection to the Divine, joy, tenderness, bearing witness to love, being in love, kindness, beauty, laughter, wonder, appreciation, a gift of incomprehensible emotional value, friendship, success, and something we forget all too often as we are wrapped up in our own daily dramas, either being the recipient of, or providing, acknowledgment.  

The tears I express most often are based in gratitude, and those that are generated from a white light ‘spinning’ in my solar plexus which I refer to as “getting the passions” are the heightened version of gratitude.  If you are witness to my tears (or anyone’s I suppose) understand that oftentimes these are manifestations of such powerful emotions that I simply cannot find words to convey what is in my head and heart exists in perfect balance – tears, then, are my language of love.

As Kanika leaves my physical presence without a doubt I know that I am better for our connection – for surely it is based in some previous lifetime as it has been so powerful for me.  And if they are blessed with children and I am so blessed with a future which holds promise of a deeper, romantic love than I can imagine possible I hope we will bear witness to the others’ joy in person.  Until then, tears of deep gratitude and those related to having to say goodbye to someone I have come to love. There will always be a place in my heart that is uniquely yours Kanika.

This final note – an addendum – offered this morning by the man who wishes to brush my tears (seemingly in all their various forms) away:  “All the tears finish one day in the sea.”

 

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The love letter.

I have just done a couple of things that I never thought I would do (again). At 52, and having been divorced twenty-two years, sworn off dating or even so much as considering romance a possibility for the last eight years, a man is prompting me to ‘pull out all the stops’ – go figure.

I made a double strength pot to make Vietnamese Iced Coffee (decaf, I wouldn’t even subject myself to me on caffeine).  I took three pages of Crane stationary – the remnants of some long ago fancy with having my own copperplate engraved stuff – and sprayed long discontinued Niki de St Phalle fragrance over it, pulled out my favorite shade of red lipstick and did up my mouth so I could leave a lip-print on the last page, and, more incredibly, just snipped a lock of my hair and bound it up in lavender embroidery floss.  I am about to respond to two emails this incredible man wrote to me earlier today and provide comment on a picture he has sent to me of himself taken in Martinique in June.  There is no doubt after the morning and early afternoon of thoughts as to why I am doing these arcane things steeped in history between lovers – none at all. 

It would be ‘more efficient’ I suppose to simply fire off an email covering all – in fact I did respond to each but hours of quiet reflection since have brought forth a level of intention, of making a gift of the span of what I am thinking and feeling in response that is more equal to the transparency the man has daringly offered of his own mindset.

How odd.  We have never spoken a word to one another as yet – my French being in disuse for more than a decade and his confidence over his spoken English determining that ‘for now’ our exploration of becoming familiar is limited to the typed word.  How we are communicating is tender, slower, filled with anticipation and hopes. The graphic sexual desire and content that has accompanied so many other men met through OKCupid has, over the course of more than 100 bits of communication, been blissfully absent.  I have been happy with the pace of our mutual discovery, it has made me calm, thoughtful, laugh, has made my heart leap and my butterflies flutter in my stomach. And yet, today something shifted for me as a result of his words and in combination of a benign image of him I really started to consider him as he signed off in the last as “your French lover”.

Is there a woman on the face of the planet who hasn’t secretly longed to have an interesting, passionate, desirable man think of himself as her lover long before their eyes meet or their lips touch?  Hours earlier I had expressed his need to ensure that I had sufficient space to not be scared off, and suddenly I could actually feel his hands in my hair, hear his whispered passions, taste his mouth as he kissed me and feel myself swoon. This is how I come to have assembled this tableau of romance before me, why I write this now before I settle in to write him a second scented letter, so he will know it’s forthcoming and the anticipation of that knowledge brings us closer to the eventual meeting when we will either confirm this has not been a delicious fantasy and something that requires bolder steps toward bridging the 6000km between us, or goes down against our mutual histories as something pure and delightful than men and women in the year 2013 rarely have the skills to cultivate.

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The empty box.

Right now, sitting in all its rectangular glory on my living room carpet is a HUGE (48” tall) empty box. Its use is to be expected – to ship two chairs to their new home with their eBay buyer who lives in New Zealand (which is not to be expected). The fact that this box and its contents will soon travel nearly 9,000 miles has prompted me to view it as a metaphor for life – possibilities to carry us farther than we ever imagined – forcing me to re-examine what it means to be human, what it means to have a soul, what happens when we diverge from a conventional path, and in the end who really cares about conventionality?   In that my girlfriend Lynne says I am not the least bit conventional this blog post should remove all doubt.

My new friend Momo and I met through that odd convergence of both desiring to be someplace other than where we were, specifically Stockholm, and on an online dating site which mutually ‘chose us’ to share with the other thus fostering our visiting one another’s profiles. On his I read:

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” – Rumi 

Is there a person alive who, in their heart of hearts, doesn’t long to have this level of completion in the arms of another? Yet, as a man of 25 he wasn’t even in the range of men I had identified as ‘appropriate’.  Perhaps when a man is in his 60s dating a woman in her 80s it is not such a leap, I confess, I had a very real age bias against him for romantic viability.

My response to his first message:

“…Thank you for your kindness and message. When I woman reaches a ‘certain age’ she doesn’t actually expect a handsome man many years younger than she is to notice her or issue a compliment.”

To which he replied:

“You are welcome and these are facts not just compliments :).  I really never believed in men or women reaching “certain” age, we are/were born free of rules and restrictions but then we start following them and make our lives harder. The older people grow I guess the sexier and more mature yet the youth and beauty is (still) in the heart and soul. Our flames of desires and beauty is eternal and never changes, unless we change. I liked your profile, mind as well. I believe you are really sexy and beautiful lady. So what brings beautiful queen like you here? How did you maintain your beauty and beautiful soul?”

Oh, an ‘old soul’ – not easy to put one of those off.  Without expectation I was now receiving a gift, what was I going to do with it? What possibilities exist that I wished to explore? What was I going to shut off because of what other people might think? What might I learn (or re-learn) in connecting? Oh, yes, and to remind myself that this man was certainly not a child – he is actually a year older than my husband was when we married, old enough to know what he was seeking.

As someone who truly believes and embraces the idea that every person coming into our life has a message to convey, a quickening of our being that leaves us better, that there is no such thing as a coincidence, and, like that big empty cardboard box, this conversation was leading me to something worth exploring, even if I didn’t yet have cognition of what that might be.  What it is turning out to be is resonance, amplification and a synergy of philosophies.

In the length of time I have known him (which isn’t really fair as we’ve spoken in real time twice and never in person) Momo and I have explored the boundaries of Out of Body Experiences and Astral Projection (both very new to my intellectual pursuits and reality), the concept of heightened spirituality bringing greater responsibility to our physicality, how abstinence is infinitely preferable to sharing a casual f*ck because in doing so we totally mess up our auras with people who are perhaps not worthy of being ‘there’ in the first place, how the expansion of chakra energy isn’t about (commonly misconstrued) sex but our mindfulness setting us further along on our paths toward enlightenment, to at-one-ment, with the Divine.

We share, with soon-to-be-published author Sophie Fontanel, a belief that even witnessing perfect sensuality is more fulfilling than participating in something mediocre or base.  That in defining and cultivating our discernment rather than simply observing abstinence, in both of our cases long periods such as Ms. Fontanel embraced, has provided us with clarity around our own beings that would have human sexuality expert Alyssa Royce providing standing ovation – he practicing Tantric and I, ‘mindful sensuality’ as I refer to it. What’s more than this heightened sense of self-fulfillment and protection, is a pursuit of elegance and authenticity which has lead me to create (as Momo refers to it) “…your bed “nest”, it just gives a visual message to the future beloved where the magic will be made on all levels and your wise beautiful soul matches your hotness and feminine attractiveness :).” 

And so while I battle the impact of societies imposed value of youth and conventional mores upon my psyche he kept repeating that all that was making me (in my mind also) less desirable was actually making me more so to him. Thank goodness physical distance separates us so I have time to process the connection and compatibility we share, and a whole big empty box of romantic, intellectual and spiritual possibilities to explore.

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